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Ask Marilyn: How to Save Money on Wine

Dick McGowan of Dahlgren, Virginia, writes:

Marilyn: A group of 14 of us recently participated in a wine tasting. Wines were divided into four categories—Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Shiraz, and Zinfandel—with three wines in each group. In a blind tasting, we were to determine whether a wine cost less than $10, between $10-20, or more than $20. One wine of each price range was included in each category.

As a group, we correctly identified a wine's price range (cheap, mid-price, expensive) a little more than half the time. Looking at the ranges separately, we correctly chose the mid-priced wine only 45 percent of the time. We did better with the low and high ranges.